Telling the India Rising Story

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Much of the public debate on the role and relevance of the Public Broadcaster in India tends to find be along the twin extremes of either an adversarial role or a propagandist role for the public broadcaster. Lost in the din and the dust of this polarized debate is the arduous task the public broadcaster has set for itself of telling the India Story.

This is a story that needs to be told not from the vantage point of TV studios in Delhi or from the elite echo chambers of the OpEd columns but from the non-descript corners of the country. It is in these non-descript corners that a new India is being scripted and it is from these pockets that India is rising to make itself heard across the globe. Which other Broadcaster in India today operates television channels specific to twenty plus states, reporting TV news from twice as many cities while simultaneously managing the most complex radio network of hundreds of stations with services in several times as many languages and dialects. Telling the India story is as much about Chandubhai of Amreli who sells papayas to Haryana

through dedicated channels on YouTube and Soundcloud you can be a part of this story telling from every corner of India in a manner unthinkable a few years back with this list of several hundred twitter handles of Doordarshan and All India Radio from across India.

It is this picture of the role played by the public broadcaster in India that is grossly missing in the lopsided debate we have witnessed in recent weeks. A notable exception was this fine piece in the HT on how All India Radio is striving to preserve the oral traditions of India.